So Long Ago
by angeltread
Summary: Remus finds a photograph...TEARJERKER


A/N The song is'Photograph' by Nickelback.

* * *

Remus looked at the tiny snapshot from so long ago. He didn't know when it was taken; sometime in their seventh year he would hazard to guess. It had been taken under the beech tree beside the lake. James was swinging on the branch that dangled above the water, laughing. Sirius was splashing around the water with his feet, taking extreme joy and pride when he got it high enough to hit James in the face. Peter was laughing at the both of them, and he, Remus, was sitting there with a book, watching the whole scene with a smile._

* * *

Look at this photograph,_

_It always seems to make me laugh._

_How did our eyes get so red  
And what the hell is on Joey's head?_

_This is where I grew up,  
I think the present owner fixed it up,  
I never knew we ever went without,  
The second floor is hard for sneaking out_

* * *

Yes, now Remus remembered. It WAS in seventh year, graduation day. How could he have forgotten? Now the picture-Sirius was pushing James off the branch and laughing at him until he was pulled in too. Picture-Remus and Real-Remus laughed quietly as Peter pointed at the two sopping wet teens and cackled.

He wondered if James and Sirius could see the picture wherever the hell – or heaven – they were anyway. Who had taken the thing? Lily? Most likely.

_

* * *

And this is where I went to school  
Most of the time had better things to do  
Criminal record says I broke in twice  
I must've done it half a dozen times_

_I wonder if it's too late  
Should I go back and try to graduate?  
Life's better now than it was back then  
If I was them I wouldn't let me in_

* * *

He thought, though it might have been his imagination, that he saw a shaggy black dog outside his window that night. He stood there for almost two hours, looking, but it never came back. Nor had the stag that had briefly appeared fifteen years earlier.

Remus went back and laid on his side. He faced his bedside table, and on it was the picture in a frame. The laughter seemed to echo through his mind.

"_Come on up, Moony!"_

"_Yeah, so we can push you in too!"_

"_Right."_

"_Really! I won't, Padders will!"_

"_Shut up, Prongs!"_

Remus reached out, a cold tears dripping onto his pillow, and placed the frame face-down so that their faces no longer burned into his eyes.

_

* * *

Oh, oh, oh...  
Oh, God I..._

Every memory of looking out the back door  
I have the photo album spread out on my bedroom floor  
It's hard to say it, time to say it  
Goodbye, goodbye

_I miss that town, I miss the faces  
You can't erase, you can't replace it  
I miss it now, I can't believe it  
So hard to stay, too hard to leave it _

* * *

Remus sat in the sunny patch by the library window and opened up a book he had been reading a couple of nights ago. He turned to the dog-eared page, and out fell the snapshot. He remembered taking it and looking at it with the book on his lap.

He thought back to when he saw them laughing, for real, alive, in front of his very eyes. But now…gone, gone, gone…

And Remus, for one of the first and last times of his life, laid his head down and cried. He cried for the lost, for the doomed...how ironic that the one group that would accept him, the most lively of all people at Hogwarts, should be found dead while their children still lived on and fought...while they died, he lived...

Take me with you! He wanted to scream. But no...Harry needed him...

In the photo, James and Sirius were in a face-making war. Remus in the photo was shaking with laughter. Remus, this Remus, the Remus that was alive now, only smiled.

_

* * *

If I could relive those days  
I know the one thing that would never change_

Every memory of looking out the back door  
I have the photo album spread out on my bedroom floor  
It's hard to say it, time to say it  
Goodbye, goodbye

* * *

Severus Snape entered the library where Tonks had said he would find the stoic, happy werewolf. He froze. Remus had a book in his lap, a small square piece of paper in his hand, and tear after tear rolling down his face.

He dropped the square and let it flutter to the ground. He stood, the book falling out of his lap, and hurried past Snape.

The Potions Master stepped in and picked up the paper. He almost dropped it in shock. There, staring up at him, for once all in order, together, were Sirius, James, Pettigrew, and lastly, Remus himself. It was stained with tears, both new and old. And somehow, Severus could hear laughter…

_

* * *

_

Every memory of walking out the front door  
I found the photo of the friend that I was looking for  
It's hard to say it, time to say it  
Goodbye, goodbye

_Look at this photograph  
Every time I do it makes me laugh  
Every time I do it makes me…_


End file.
